


These Bloodied Hands

by MadameHyde



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Height Differences, Late Night Conversations, wingman!dorothea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25747828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameHyde/pseuds/MadameHyde
Summary: It isn't like Hubert to be so angry with Edelgard over the necessary evils of her war, and she simply cannot fathom the source of his fury.Maybe Dorothea can help her understand?
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 12
Kudos: 89





	These Bloodied Hands

_And I wait for you here, with silent voice_

_God knows I never wanted you to make this choice_

_-Shaman’s Harvest, Silent Voice_

Once, when Edelgard was very young, she fell off a cliff near the palace in Enbarr.

It wasn’t as if she’d _meant_ to—she’d been chasing a ball her brother had thrown and just, sort of, well, _fell._ And it wasn’t a steep cliff either! Well, not _particularly_ steep. She told her nanny so when the panicked woman had found her, stubbornly trying not to cry, hours later at the foothills of the Adrestian palace.

Hubert had called her careless, then, with all the gravitas a seven-year-old boy could possibly muster. She’d stuck her tongue out at him and called him a worrywart, and never admitted to him that her ankle had never healed quite right. He’d found out anyway.

During their academy years, she was constantly banged up from training, classes, and her side projects (as Hubert liked to call them) as the Flame Emperor. She could scarcely remember a day that her body didn’t ache _somewhere,_ or that she wasn’t bone-tired. But there was always work to be done—be it schoolwork, governance, or those unending side projects—that she simply just pressed on. She had no other choice.

Hubert had called her careless then, too. He was always fretting about whether she’d eaten and whether she’d gotten enough rest and whether she’d done her reason homework.

And now, during this unrelenting war, she was both—constantly scraped up and getting herself into messes she couldn’t untangle on her own. The bridge of Myrddin had been one, Deirdru another. Her old ankle wound still ached on the days it rained.

But this time when Hubert called her careless, it was not that he was trying to impress upon her the importance of her station, or the importance of her wellbeing.

No, this time Hubert was _furious._

“What were you _thinking,_ charging off like that?” 

It was only due to the canvas walls of her war tent that he wasn’t shouting proper. “ _You. Are. A. Knight._ You are more metal than woman on that battlefield, and you charged at a group of mages! What would you have done if they’d caught you with Thoron? With Bolganone? _With_ _Abraxas?”_

The truth was, Edelgard hadn’t been thinking of all of that when she’d charged towards the left flank in their last battle. She’d just been thinking that their left flank was terribly exposed, and that Caspar needed assistance before he was overrun. And really, she’d taken worse hits in academy training—a little gust of wind wasn’t going to knock her over, after all.

“Your concern has been noted, Hubert,” she tried.

Something dangerous flashed in his eyes. “ _I am not finished.”_

Edelgard froze; Hubert simply did _not_ speak to her that way. “I beg your pardon?”

Hubert drew in a breath that strained against what little patience he had remaining. “I am not finished,” he said, much more smoothly.

Edelgard’s ire rose at it. “Then by all means, _do_ go on.”

“I _shall,_ my lady.” Ordinarily, those words were merely polite deference. But they were draggers, now, hurled through the semidarkness of her war tent directly into her heart. “As I was saying, you charged after a group of mages in full armor, eyes blazing, and _what_ did you plan to do when you _reached_ them?”

A long silence stretched between them.

“Oh, may I speak?” Edelgard snapped. “Fine then—I planned to decapitate them all _,_ magic be damned!”

“You simply cannot think that way!”

In a rare show of agitation, Hubert ran one gloved hand through his bangs, pulling them back to reveal the eye they usually covered. The intensity in his gaze was suddenly doubled, a gut punch in the dark, and Edelgard found it hard to breathe. 

“You are not a mere pawn in this war, my lady. You _are_ our war.”

“Have those speeches gone to your head?” she snapped. It was better than _are you daft?,_ which wasis what she wanted to say. “I am a general, Hubert.”

“You are…” He was suddenly in her personal space, towering over her as their natural height difference made itself readily apparent. “…our _Emperor.”_

“And I do not intend to lead from the back line,” she said. “We’ve discussed this.”

“My lady, I _beg_ you to reconsider. The closer we draw to Fhirdiad, the less likely Dimitri is to attack anyone—and anything—but you.”

So _that’s_ what this was about. Hubert, the ever practical one, always thinking three steps ahead of anyone else.

“And I’ll deal with him when the time comes,” Edelgard said. “Or, I suppose more accurately, you will.”

“And if I am not there,” Hubert pressed, both physically and in words, “as I was not today? What then?”

“What do you mean, _what then?”_ It was suddenly stiflingly hot inside the tent this war tent, and Edelgard’s patience was nearly as thin as Hubert’s. “I would handle it, as I did today. And I have had quite enough of your scare tactics, thank you!”

Hubert froze, and an odd sort of expression came over his face. As if he hadn’t realized where he stood. 

“Force of habit,” he muttered, and suddenly he was far enough away that Edelgard could breathe again.

“I understand your concern,” Edelgard said, more softly than she’d been speaking, “and I truly do appreciate it. But you have to consider what would happen if I _didn’t_ lead from the front.”

“You would leave it to me,” Hubert said, matter-of-factly. “And I would ensure we do what needs be done.”

“But then _you_ would be in as much danger as I am currently.” He never seemed to realize this flaw in his so-called brilliant scheme.

“My dear lady,” he said, “with all due respect, I am far more expendable than you are.”

“Nonsense!” She startled the both of them with her vehemence. It was a real effort to lower her voice, to add, “I never want to hear those lies in my presence again. You are as invaluable to this army as I am, Hubert. Please know that.”

Hubert’s lips twisted, almost imperceptibly. “Far be it from me to argue with Your Majesty, I suppose.”

“Then what in the Eternal Flames have you been doing this whole time?”

An artery in Hubert’s forehead suddenly stood out, and although Edelgard knew this was Not Good, she also knew they were too far gone.

“I have been _saving_ your _life.”_

He spoke crisply, sharply. Venomously. And Edelgard felt something deep in her chest crumple at the sound.

She tilted her chin up, imperiously. Imperially. “I believe we’ve established today I am hardly in need of saving.”

“And _I_ believe we established long ago that I work in your best interest, whether you agree with me or not.”

Oh, it was _impossible_ to argue with Hubert! He never seemed to get the _point._

“We are finished with this conversation,” Edelgard said, drawing her most commanding voice from where she’d left it on the battlefield. “And I would perhaps be willing to overlook this…” What _did_ one call this? “…breach in decorum in the morning.”

This time, a vein pulsed in Hubert’s neck, only just visible above his stiff-necked collar.

“Very well.” He was already moving, away from her, away from this… _thing_ that had suddenly sprung up between them. He didn’t pause as he threw over his shoulder, “Then I shall apologize in the morning.”

And then he was gone.

-)

Sleep did not come easily to Edelgard that night. Her lungs were twisted up in knots, her throat tight as if she were on the verge of tears. And that was well before the nightmares had ever set in.

She dreamt of long-toothed Crest Beasts, of the bloody path she walked, of Dimitri’s severed head on a pike outside his city’s gates. She dreamt of her siblings, long since passed on, of her father’s stern glare, and of narrowed eyes of the brightest green.

The third time she awoke, she decided sleep was a farce at this point, and went to brew herself a cup of tea.

She slipped quietly through the war camp, marveling at the ability to move without being accosted. Was this how Hubert felt, normally? Perhaps she should be sneaking off to make tea in the middle of the night more often.

Her head felt so terribly light without her dense, horned crown, but her heart was so terribly heavy.

She swore at the flint as she struck up the main fire, relishing in the small freedom. After a few more moments of fiddling, it alighted, and she set about putting the kettle atop the grate. She nearly had her tea brewed when she heard the footsteps.

Edelgard leapt to her feet, hand reaching for the dagger she forever carried on her person. She wished she’d brought her axe, and then dismissed the thought as absurd—where would she have buckled the belt, over her dressing gown?

A moment later, a familiar head of wavy brown hair came into view, and Edelgard relaxed her grip on her dagger.

“Edie?” Dorothea’s pretty green eyes—so different from Hubert’s—went wide. “What are you doing awake?”

Edelgard allowed herself a small smile. Dorothea had that effect on people. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“Oh, _I_ just came back from a lovely evening with a gentleman over in the third division.” It occurred to Edelgard that Dorothea was still fully dressed for the day. “But _you,_ I know, haven’t had nearly so pleasant an evening.”

Edelgard sighed. “What gave it away?”

Dorothea blinked, as though just now realizing the kettle and tin mug. “Oh, Edie.” She sighed, and then asked, “Room for two?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t another mug,” Edelgard said, although she found herself taking a seat back on the log bench further to the side than before.

“That’s alright.” Dorothea took up the seat beside her, and the two sat in comfortable silence as Edelgard finished brewing her tea.

The tart, heady fragrance of bergamot hit her full force as Edelgard took a slow sip of her tea. It warmed her bones and relaxed her shoulders, right up until Dorothea said:

“So, what did you fight about?”

Edelgard nearly choked. “I beg your pardon?”

Dorothea was staring her down with the sort of pointed intensity that told Edelgard she wasn’t getting out of this one. “Hubert stormed out of the war tent earlier like the devil himself was on his heels, and here you are at Goddess-knows-what hour, making tea for yourself.”

A long silence stretched between them, and in it, Dorothea’s eyebrow arched delicately towards her hairline.

Edelgard couldn’t force herself to look up out of her mug. “Hubert’s just cross I went to bolster the left flank, today.”

“Ah.” Had Edelgard been looking, she would have seen the mischief alight in Dorothea’s eyes. “Whatever for?”

Edelgard sighed, chasing steam off the surface of her tea. “He seems to find me incapable of defending myself against a group of mages.”

Dorothea’s elegant brows furrowed. “I hardly think that’s the case. You took a huge hit for Caspar today, Edie. I’m not surprised Hubert’s beside himself with worry. In fact, I’d be concerned we had an imposter if he weren’t.”

“Oh for the love of the Goddess _,_ it was a _wind_ spell, _”_ Edelgard said, slamming her fist into her thigh in frustration. “It wasn’t as if it would kill me.”

Dorothea paused, another thought occurring to her. “Edie,” she said, very gently, “have you and Hubert ever fought before?”

Edelgard paused, racking her brains. “Typically, we get on just fine,” she said, after a moment. “I honestly can’t think of a time I’ve ever had him so angry with me.”

Dorothea’s mouth dropped in a little ‘oh’ of surprise. “Ever? Haven’t you known each other since birth, or thereabouts?”

Edelgard gave a choked little laugh. “Thereabouts, yes. His family has served mine for centuries, and he was assigned to me when we were…” She paused, not often lingering on the particulars of her childhood. “…well, to be quite honest with you, Dorothea, I can’t remember a time that Hubert wasn’t around.” None that she would share so openly, anyway.

“And he’s never been angry with you, in all that time?” Disbelief colored Dorothea’s voice.

“Not like this,” was all Edelgard could offer.

Dorothea pursed her lips like she had something to add, but when Edelgard said nothing else, they receded into a pregnant silence.

Edelgard sipped her tea, and waited.

“Well?” she finally said. “Out with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t dodge me, Dorothea. There’s something you want to say about this, and I should very much like to hear it.” Maybe the songstress could help make sense of him; she was very good at understanding the male psyche.

Dorothea sighed again, theatrically this time, with her hand over her heart. “Oh, Edie! Is it not enough for me to simply sit here and keep my dear friend company?”

“Not when you make that face, it isn’t.”

Dorothea huffed a laugh, and got to her feet. “You wound me, Edie dear.”

It was Edelgard’s turn to arch an eyebrow, over the rim of her tin tea mug.

“Oh, don’t give me the Empress face!”

Edelgard raised her chin, and with it, her mug.

Dorothea sighed overdramatically again, but this time laughter caught the tail end. “Surely you know why he’s so angry, Edie.”

It sounded sort of like a question, but the inflection didn’t quite follow.

“I… told you why?” Edelgard blinked a few times, uncomprehending.

Dorothea pinched the bridge of her noise like she felt a migraine coming on. “Edelgard von Hresvelg, I _know_ you are not this dense.”

This time, Edelgard really _did_ spit out the sip of tea she’d just taken. “I _beg_ your _pardon?”_

“Edelgard, that man has been in love with you for _years,_ and he’s terrified you’ll get yourself killed one of these days!”

A soft breeze fell across the war camp, across the sudden hush that overtook Edelgard’s lungs.

Hubert? In _love?_ It didn’t make a damn bit of sense, and certainly _,_ she had never met a man—strike that, a _person—_ less likely to feel fear than Hubert von Vestra. He’d left his ability to feel fear behind long ago, or so he always joked (privately, and mostly to her), along with most of his colored clothing.

“Oh, Dorothea,” Edelgard finally managed, somewhat hoarsely. “It’s Hubert.”

“Edelgard, you look me in the eye and tell me that again!”

Edelgard got to her feet, fully intending to make Dorothea understand the utter preposterousness of what had just come out of her mouth. And yet somewhere along the way, the words died in her throat.

It was Hubert, who had been her shadow for as long as she could remember.

It was Hubert, who would forever bloody his hands to keep hers clean.

It was Hubert, and his dark magic, and his bright green eyes, and his strong, scarred hands, and his wry sense of humor, and his broad shoulders and…

Oh.

Oh _no._

“Dorothea,” Edelgard said quietly, suddenly wishing she hadn’t quite stood up so quickly. “It’s _Hubert.”_

Dorothea was simultaneously smiling at her and giving her an exasperated glare.

“I have to go,” Edelgard said, already moving.

“I’m sure you do!” Dorothea called after her.

-)

Edelgard hurried back through the war camp like the Eternal Flames themselves licked at her heels. She had to find him, had to apologize for snapping at him, had to make him understand. If he decided the best course of action after this was a giant step back, then so be it, but Edelgard felt like if she kept this in a moment longer, her lungs would burst and her ribs would crack.

Her feet knew the way to Hubert’s tent nearly without the help of her brain, but she found it empty. Bile rose in her throat as she searched the surrounding areas—the training ground, the mess tent, the war tent, the byways. If she hadn’t just been there, she would have checked the main fire, too.

She spread her search in increasingly panicked concentric circles. Where could he _possibly_ be, at this hour? It was late—past the changing of the night guard, past when most of the camp had put themselves to bed. She supposed she would probably regret this in the morning, but the need just felt so _urgent._

Her relief was palpable when she finally found him talking to one of his Vestra sorcery engineers, their heads bent low over a piece of paper in his hands. It disappeared a moment later when she realized the sorcery engineer was a _sorceress_ engineer _,_ and she was pressed into Hubert’s side while they conversed over whatever letter or drawing or what-have-you he held.

“…See to it,” Hubert was saying when Edelgard entered earshot. “There can be no foul-ups, this time.”

“Of course,” the woman said.

“And once…” Hubert froze at the sight of her, white hair like a ghost in the darkness. “My lady?”

“Hubert.” Edelgard was relieved that her voice was strong, if a little hoarse. She herself was shaking, although the night was warm. “Might I speak with you?”

Hubert dismissed the sorcery engineer with a curt nod. The woman disappeared a moment later, leaving the Emperor and her Vassal staring at each other on the outskirts of their war camp.

“I am yours,” Hubert said. It had fallen from his lips a thousand times before, and yet suddenly seemed so _different._ Scandalous, even. “Though if you wish for an apology, I believe I still have a few hours until dawn.”

This was the part she’d turned over and over and over again in her mind as she’d searched. What in _Fodlán_ was she supposed to say, exactly?

“In the war tent, if you please,” she blurted out.

Hubert fell wordlessly into step beside her as they made their way back towards the source of their argument. She’d been trying to buy herself the time to think, to plan her next chess move, but instead found herself hyper-aware of his presence beside her. He moved at a respectable distance, and yet that entire side may as well have been on fire, for all the good it did her.

Ever the gentleman, Hubert held up the flap of the war tent when they arrived, and Edelgard took another moment to fuss with the jar candles on the war table. When she could stall no longer, she turned to face him, candle in hand, and found that he was, once again, very much in her personal space.

He had always been taller than her, naturally, but now she felt positively dwarfed in his presence.

“My lady,” Hubert said, quietly, “I’m afraid you’re out of candles.”

The breath in her lungs threatened to choke her again, and Edelgard faltered.

Hubert let the silence stretch almost unbearably long. “Well?” he asked, his voice a ghostly breath in the darkness. “Have you more to say on my earlier _breach in decorum?”_

Damn him and his impeccable memory, and damn him and his bright green eyes, too. “I do,” Edelgard said after a moment.

“Well then, by all means.” Hubert folded his arms across his broad chest, and Edelgard couldn’t help but notice that he’d thrown his cloak on over his sleeping clothes, too.

“You couldn’t sleep either, could you?” she asked.

Hubert seemed surprised at the question. “No, not particularly. But that’s hardly new.”

It occurred to Edelgard that she hadn’t known that. “Oh? I hadn’t realized.”

Hubert’s face twisted into that same odd expression from before, and in the soft candlelight, it seemed a cross between pain and fondness. “Of course you hadn’t. I didn’t wish to burden you. But that’s beside the point—if you wish to shout at me some more, by all accounts, please do. I live ever to serve.”

There he went again, flinging polite pleasantries like knives. Edelgard sighed, and was torn between bringing the candle into both hands, and setting it back down. It kept him away, sure, but that was also the problem.

“I really do appreciate your concern, Hubert,” she said. “My frustration lies in that I simply cannot lead this war from the back lines, and we both know that. I never understood why you insisted I remain behind, when I was born to lead.”

“Understood?” Of course that was the word he landed on. “Have you reached a conclusion, then?”

Edelgard drew in a deep breath, and set the candle down. “I have.”

His eyebrow quirked, and Edelgard errantly wondered if he used the one not hidden in his bangs on purpose. “Do share.”

On her tiptoes, Edelgard barely came up to his sternum. She had to gesture for him to lean in to have even the remotest chance of catching him off guard. And it was a bad idea, of course. He smelled pleasantly of dark ground coffee and even darker magic, and devoid of all their usual layers, they may as well have been naked.

“My lady?” The venom had left his voice, replaced by concern.

She was frozen in place, hands stuck somewhere near her sides, mind stuck somewhere between the first time she’d met him and the last time she’d seen him.

“Lady Edelgard?” His hands, so warm in their lack of gloves, found her face. He physically lifted her head to make her face him, make her _see._

Her heart burst.

“ _Edelgard_.” Her name could have been a prayer as he cradled her face with all the softness in the world. “What have I done?”

It wasn’t until he swept a thumb across her cheek that she realized she was crying, silently, her tears dotting her dressing gown and his sleeves.

“Please, my dear lady.” Hubert didn’t beg, but his voice was soft, raw, devoid of its usual smoothness. “What have I done?”

_You have loved me, when I couldn’t even love myself. You have carried me, when I couldn’t carry on. You have shouldered my burdens before I could so much as name them._

She owed him a great deal more than her shadow.

“Edelgard, I—”

She cut him off with a kiss that bordered on desperate, and suddenly found that she wasn’t close enough. She felt a wild urge to press the advantage, to feel the sharp planes of his body against her own rounded edges, to curl her fingers into the collar of his cloak and _yank._

It scared her, and she let go.

Hubert was staring at her, wide-eyed and still as the frozen seas north of Faerghus. She felt herself flush an embarrassed crimson at the scrutiny.

“Are you drunk?” he asked after a moment.

“No,” Edelgard said, embarrassment rising still higher in her cheeks. It was a fair enough question, she supposed.

“Did someone put you up to this?”

“No!” She was incensed at the thought.

“And you didn’t hit your head on something earlier, that Linhardt could have perhaps missed after the battle?”

Edelgard sighed. “ _Really_ , Hubert. I’m fine.”

“Great,” he said, looking somewhat dazed. “Capital. Then you’re going to have to forgive me for this.”

And he yanked her against him and into a fiercely fervent kiss.

It was encompassing, all-consuming, heady like dark magic and just as dangerous. And yet, Edelgard wanted nothing more than to sink into it, into _him_. He drew her flush against his chest, and she found herself grinning as her fingers curled into his cloak and pulled.

She was kissing him back, trying desperately to impress upon him what Dorothea had seen, earlier, tangled up in her heart.

“My lady.” Hubert had pulled back just far enough to speak. “Are you certain you want… this?”

As if there were anything else left in the world _to_ want. “Hubert? Kindly call me El.”

Although she didn’t know it, this time, it was Hubert’s heart that burst. 

“El,” he said, quietly, as though testing it against her. As if it were a dress she could fit into, or a lance that needed shortening to actually be wielded by the notoriously short Emperor. “El.”

She could get used to that, coming from him. She would _not,_ however, get used to their height difference in quarters this close. “Oh, come _here,_ would you?”

Edelgard suddenly found herself graced with one of Hubert’s rare, genuine smiles. He slipped his arms around her waist and rested his forehead against the crown of her head, cradling her to his chest as though he were afraid she would break.

Or worse, she supposed. Run.

“Last chance,” Hubert warned as he brought their faces close once more.

Edelgard grinned again. “I’m not going anywh—”

She gave an indignant squawk as he kissed her for the third time, and she felt, more so than heard, his rumbling laughter. 

**Author's Note:**

> I just really needed these dorks to kiss, okay?
> 
> partially inspired by "Silent Voice" by Shaman's Harvest, by which I mean I had it on repeat
> 
> Betaed by the lovely Kaerra!
> 
> Enjoy the fic? [Come hang out on twitter](https://twitter.com/MadsHatter1)


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